Understanding and acceptance of autism is a growing movement, and with that includes design that aims to aid the development of social skills. This simple yet effective tool, called Joyco, is a game for parents and children that focuses on playful interaction. Tactile elements stimulate pleasure in the form of touch and an interactive hoop game encourages eye contact with mom or dad!
The iSCOPE integrates the use of an iPhone or iPod to help children explore their natural surroundings. Akin to a magnifying glass, the device combines learning with a fun interactive experience. It encourages children to explore through real-time interaction with nature and keeps them engaged by disclosing facts and trivia.
– Yanko Design Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world! Shop CKIE – We are more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design! (Exploring With iSCOPE was originally posted on Yanko Design)
The statistics supporting bilingual education are hard to argue with—improved problem-solving and social skills as well as higher test scores mean that foreign languages set kids up for success across the board. The sweet spot for second language acquisition comes early on, so exposure in the first few years…
A new initiative for creating and sharing educational lessons reaches the traditional classroom and beyond
For years TED has fulfilled their mission of spreading ideas and inspiration through conferences, media and research fellowships. Taking this a step further and in the direction of generations to come, today TED launches a new TED-Ed initiative to assist educators and students worldwide. Understanding the evolutionary role of video in the modern classroom (and beyond), the new TED-Ed site offers a structured avenue for repurposing content by allowing teachers to “flip” any video on YouTube—including but not limited to TED-Ed videos—into a sharable lesson ripe with quizzes, informational copy and attention keeping animations.
Directing the initiative is Logan Smalley, a former TED Fellow with a background in documentary work. After starting in January 2011 and working on the TED Prize, Smalley sparked the TED-Ed program to rethink the traditional notion of teacher and student. To address this the new initiative aims to share educational lessons and inspiration with anyone willing to learn or teach, both inside and outside the physical classroom.
Open to anyone, the thematically organized lessons can be taken without a login, although one is required to assign or track lessons. This proves valuable for both students and teachers as one can share and subsequently track participation and total student interactions with a specific lesson. With the customization platform teachers can adjust lessons and quizzes to meet their individual needs. This means adding, removing or changing quiz questions and informational copy. Once edited the lesson is given a unique URL to be shared freely.
As the initiative is in its beta stage the majority of lessons offered at this point have been originally created by TED, but as it grows lessons created and adjusted by outside educators will eventually be uploaded for sharing. One can “flip” a TED-Ed video to customize the quiz questions and copy, or “flip” any video from YouTube to create an all new lesson. All lessons uploaded will first be cleared by a TED review board to ensure only the most effective, informational lessons reach the final audience.
As participation grows TED-Ed online will as well, adding subcategories to their subjects and expanding upon the traditional taxonomies presented. And in keeping with the spirit of TED, signing up is free, allowing anyone and everyone to be a part of the evolution and education process. For more information or to experience the beautifully designed site yourself head over to TED-Ed online.
The story of one vegetable’s survival in an interactive children’s book
As a cross between illustration, philosophy and paper engineering, Sara Fanelli‘s most recent children’s book “The Onion’s Great Escape” challenges the limitations of reading as an interactive experience. Following the quest of an onion as it attempts to escape its apparent fate of death by frying, the book’s perforated core is removed page-by-page until, at the end, the onion is literally freed from the book. The innovative fusion of tactile activity and illustration is taken a step further by a call-and-response method of asking children difficult questions with room for a written answer.
Throughout the die-cut, 68-page work, questions range from the categorical “What is your name?” to the metaphysical “What is the longest minute you can remember?” Rather than dumbing down the experience, each page challenges young minds to come up with a creative response. Fanelli’s illustrations show an impressive range, and she is able to freeze moments of delight and despair as the onion flies through obstacles on its journey to save himself.
Each page of “The Onion’s Great Escape” offers a new look and experience, and the diversity of styles is enhanced by the perforated core, which can be mixed and matched with different pages in the book. As the onion gradually breaks free from the pages, it emerges to stand alone as a 3D entity—the remainder of the book’s content staying intact.
“The Onion’s Great Escape” is available for pre-order from Phaidon and on Amazon. See more images of the book in our slideshow and check out this video of the book in action.
An interactive narrative about the birth of the alphabet in a world of numbers
A charming interactive story app from Moonbot takes a pre-linguistic dystopia as the setting for a adventure tale about the invention of the alphabet. Following Moonbot’s first story “The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore,” Numberlys also takes a literary angle of a more cinematic quality. In part an homage to Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” the goose-stepping society of the Numberlys is less than intimidating as its citizens waddle across the frame.
The combination story-game-film app teaches a pseudo-history of the birth of the alphabet. Five friends set out to create something new in a world that relies entirely on numbers for communication. Their “number speak” is comically translated by our narrator, a European of ambiguous origins. In a factory reserved for number production, the friends cut, crank, twirl, bounce and bazooka all 26 letters into shape. In doing so, they unleash a new means of communication, bringing names, sunsets, jelly beans and Technicolor into their drab world.
While the high-brow references to film history and the curse of industrial capitalism may soar over the heads of little ones, the games and story are clearly aimed at young children. The mini games are entertaining enough, though really serve to keep the reader engaged as the story progresses. Closer to a film than a picture book, the story still makes good use of an alliterative vocabulary: “They were giddy! Glad! Gleeful! They would go forwards with grace, gallantry, and gusto!”
While there remains room for growth in terms of alternative story paths and better gaming, Numberlys represents a new standard in the development of interactive narratives.
Numberlys is available on the iPad and iPhone through iTunes.
A new software program trains aspiring pianists through interactive learning
Gaming meets Chopin with Playground Sessions, a downloadable software that teaches piano through its breakthrough “Play to Learn” approach. Riffing on the strumming-to-scoring simulation of Guitar Hero, Playground Sessions enables users to practice “in an interactive environment with real-time feedback,” backed by an interconnected keyboard and hit music library.
Created by brand invention firm, ZAG, Playground Sessions is a “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” method of self-driven learning motivated by the gaming allure of rewards and level ups. Drawn to their research and design expertise, Managing Director Chris Vance turned to Jan Plass and Bruce Homer, founding partners of NYU’s Consortium for Research and Evaluation of Advanced Technologies in Education (CREATE) “to fine tune specific learning-related design elements,” says Vance. Aiming to “identify design patterns for effective educational games,” CREATE’s joint initiative with Microsoft Research, Games for Learning Institute (G4LI), aligned with Playground Sessions’ innovative design requirements.
Playground Sessions uses a split interface that simultaneously highlights keyboard hand placement, musical notation and video instruction led by the self-taught pianist and YouTube sensation David Sides. “The pedagogy behind Playground Sessions taps into three powerful mechanism for learning—the motivational power of games, the ability of games to engage the learner in meaningful activities that are effective for learning, and the ability to provide detailed performance feedback to players,” explains Dr. Plass.
Organized by level—beginner to advanced—and subject—rhythm, ear training and more—Playground Sessions’ “Bootcamp” lessons appeal to learners of varying styles and preferences. Playground Sessions also allows users to share their scores via Twitter and Facebook or high-kick their skills into action with a collective competition amongst friends. Playground Sessions bolsters confidence through effective and encouraging steps, evidenced by the above video, “Days to Play,” a heartwarming story illustrating the software’s success.
“Games have a number of benefits that make them powerful learning environments with the potential to impact learning. They involve learners in the kind of activities that allow them to develop skills essential for success,” states Dr. Plass. Indeed, it’s with this gaming mentality that Playground Sessions seems to mix a winning formula for a new generation of hyper-stimulated kids and adults burnt out on traditional piano lessons.
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